The Key to Writer's Block is Very Sharp
by Meatball42
Summary: Parker wants to correct some recent out-of-character behaviour. Written for the prompts 'metafiction' and 'Parker, She knows it's a TV show and has taken to talking to the writers about getting what she wants.'


The end of this story is Hardison crowing 'I told you so!' to a rather not-in-the-mood-to-be-taunted Eliot. This was Parker's idea. She thought it would be funny. Normally, I wouldn't tell you this, but she's sort of got a knife to my throat and she wants credit where credit is due.

Sorry, yes, I'm telling this wrong. I'm really very sorry, I'll fix it.

Nate: ...and then we'll need Hardison to come through the main entrance with the delivery of flame-retardant-"

Hardison: Man, why do I always gotta be the delivery man? Sophie could be a delivery woman. I bet you would do a very fine job as a delivery woman, Sophie.

Sophie: Thank you, Hardison.

Nate: Sophie's part is later, now pay attention. Hardison, once you're inside, you'll-

At this point I had planned to lay out the con, which would be followed in scenes 13 to 44 until the episode's villains caught up to the team, and then they would revert to the fall-back plan which I wasn't going to show here. We used this method a few episodes back, but the Italian showed up there, so it was really more of a story arc thing, whereas this is a standalone episode. Anyway, this is when Parker decides to change it up.

"I want to jump off a building in this episode," Parker interjects. The others turn to her.

"What, what are you?" Nate tries to ask, twisting his head and giving her a look. Yeah, you know the look.

"This isn't a goddamn episode of some dumb TV show," Eliot snarls. He's quite frustrated at how long this meeting is taking. He was expecting them to be done by now...

"Yes it is. And I haven't gotten to jump off a building since last season. Which is pretty weird, considering that was my main reason for being on this team," Parker says, looking toward the writer's room curiously.

"Girl, you know I love it that you've gotten hooked on my fandoms, but... this _is_ real life." Hardison says, grinning proudly at his Padawan.

"Parker... are you having some sort of identity crisis?" Sophie asks carefully, looking at the others in case they've noticed something of the sort recently.

"No," Parker scoffs as though the question were silly. Then she reconsiders. "Well, maybe. I mean, I've had a huge amount of character development over the last few seasons, and it hasn't really been addressed. Eliot used to call me 'twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag,' but I've been acting really normal, lately. You guys should write a Parker-centric episode, or something," she says to us.

"What are you looking at?" Nate asks, looking around the room in the direction she spoke toward.

"The writers." Parker points at us, which, for the record, is not something we at Electric Entertainment encourage our characters to do.

"The _who_?" Eliot's face is screwed up in consternation.

Parker rolls her eyes and gets up from her chair, walking straight through the fourth wall to the writer's table. "These guys."

Lisa, who sits next to me at most of the writer's sessions, has always had a huge crush on Beth Reisgraf and is the main reason for any and all of Parker's shirtless/makeout scenes. She hurries to offer Parker some of our Chex Mix, blushing heavily. Parker takes a handful and says thanks. Lisa just about dies.

The Leverage team is staring at us in shock. Nate is spluttering, Sophie's eyes are bulging out, Eliot is reaching for the concealed blade down his right boot (as if I didn't _write_ that in there) and Hardison has stood up and is staring at us with dawning glee.

"This is... this is The French Mistake! Do I get to meet my actor? I bet he's got a sweet crib in Los Angeles, way up on the hill, with hot parties every night..."

I drop my head to the table. Why, God, why did the head writers let Peter make Hardison a Supernatural geek?

It's at this point that Parker pulls my head from the table and puts a knife to my throat, demanding that we let her jump off a few buildings.

It is at this point that she deman- politely requests that I acknowledge that she will continue to act out our 'normalizing!Parker' scripts in exchange for jumping off more buildings. After the finale, however, we have to let her get back to her crazy.

It's not my job on the line, so I agree. Any of the producers want to argue it later, they can stick _their_ necks where mine is right now.

As this is going on, Hardison is declaring that he knew Parker was sane all along, and Eliot is preparing to put some righteous fear into him.

As the other writers quickly go damage control, retconning the scene from Nate, Sophie and Eliot's memories (Peter insists on letting Hardison keep it as a dream, the meta-obsessed dork), Lisa quickly ascertains that, despite the on-screen Pardison romance, Parker definitely is interested in women, and they start making out against the writer's table. She didn't even wait for the marks on my throat to heal, the bitch.

Too bad Eliot couldn't cross over. I'd have taken this show past the watershed for him alright.


End file.
